To the Left, To the Left, Everything You Own in a Box to the Left

Oh, Mango...

Mango hadn't talked to me much in a few days, apart from saying good morning. I was a little disappointed, but I let him have his space. After all, the man has a serious girlfriend, so it's unseemly for me to chase after him. If he wants to talk to me, my desk is six feet away from his, so he knows where to find me.

Today, he came over to chat. We got onto the topic of his girlfriend, and I asked if he plans to ask her to marry him. He laughed and said I was going to get him in trouble. I gave him a confused look and asked him what the story was there. He told me that he isn't ready to get married, and the two of them moved in together under extenuating circumstances (he was graduating from school with no job and nowhere else to go). He flatly told me that sometimes you do things for the wrong reasons that work out for the best, but he sounded like he didn't believe that. I said, "But you're happy you're living with her, right?" He unconvincingly said he was.

There was a time (let's call that time "before I met Goose") when this conversation with Mango would have filled me with hope. Now it just grosses me out. He's three decades old, and he's been living with this woman for a year or two and dating her for some period of time beyond that. When he says, "I'm not ready to get married," what he means is "I don't want to marry this woman." That's fair enough, but then he shouldn't lead her to believe he wants to marry her by living with her.*

From what I've seen, situations like Mango's end very badly. At some point, his girlfriend will press the issue of marriage. He will tell her he doesn't want to marry her either directly or, more likely, by continuing to hem and haw about it. She will then boot him out on his ass. So, all he has really done is delay his homelessness by a few years. I don't want to be anywhere near this situation when the explosion inevitably comes. Frankly, this whole thing makes me think less of Mango.

*I'm assuming his girlfriend wants to marry him and that they haven't discussed his reluctance. These assumptions could be false, I concede.